


Everything is After

by virgo_writer



Series: Song of Myself (i contain multitudes) [4]
Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Laundry, Unfinished
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 09:11:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20255695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virgo_writer/pseuds/virgo_writer
Summary: The day she moves into Los Robles is uneventful. It didn't stay that way.





	Everything is After

**Author's Note:**

> I found this in one of my draft folders, and while it was clearly intended as the first chapter to something, I have no idea where I was going with this, but thought I would share any way. Tagging it Shenny becuase I'm pretty sure that's where I was going.

_The day she moves into the apartment across the hall is uneventful. _

Leonard spies her through the open door. Suggests that they introduce themselves. Sheldon protests.

"What could two physicists possibly have to say to a woman that aesthetically pleasing?" He asks, dismissing whatever foolish notions that Leonard might be entertaining regarding the beautiful young woman in 4B.

Leonard reluctantly agrees.

They do not introduce themselves.

The moment passes.

Penny glances across the hall to see their retreating figures and thinks nothing of it. A small part of her - the part that wishes for company - wishes they'd stayed long enough to say hello.

\---

Leonard and Sheldon do not visit Penny's former apartment in an ill-conceived attempt to retrieve her television/achieve coitus. As such, their first meeting with Kurt, Penny's former boyfriend, occurs when the hulking brute of a man shows up at their door in a loin cloth looking every bit the part of neolithic man.

He has quite obviously gone to the wrong apartment - the obvious signs of a party going on across the hall should have been a clear indication of his destination. Despite these clues, it takes some persuading to send him on his way. 

"He seems nice," Leonard says, voicing his opinion before Sheldon can start comparing the man to a dull puce crayon.

Sheldon raises a dubious eyebrow. "Nice?" he repeats. "As in it was _nice_ of the school bully to relieve you of your lunch money every morning?

"If it weren't apparent, that was sarcasm," Sheldon pointed out obviously. "I reframed the problem from the bully's perspective in order to give a sense or irony."

"I got that, Sheldon," Leonard answered, smile tight.

A bright laugh rings across the hall as their neighbour greets her neolithic male, reminds them both that they do not belong in that world. Leonard is suddenly glad that he never approached her the day she moved in. He knows he can't compete with well-muscled jocks, and at least from a distance he can find a way to accept that.

\---

The first contact that Penny has with her strange neighbours across the hall (a pair of geeks she can only suppose based upon the sorts of packages she'd seen delivered to their apartment) is in the form of a snarky note about hogging all the washers. The note is handwritten and left for her on top of a pile of her neatly folded laundry. It comes nearly a year after she moves into apartment 4B, her neighbours no more than faceless strangers that she might occasionally pass in the hallway without really seeing.

The note is addressed to "Penny in 4B AKA the washing machine poacher" and signed "Doctor Sheldon Lee Cooper PhD, DSc, MSc, BSc"

_'OMG,'_ she thinks sarcastically.

The body consists of the 'doctor' waxing poetically about the various benefits and deficits of the machines and her interruption of the apparent sacredness of 'Laundry Night'.

Penny promptly forgets about the note. Except a week later she decides her sheets could do with changing and she doesn't really like the colour of her other winter set, so she heads downstairs at about 7:30pm Saturday night and puts her sheets in middle washer (because the left one overheats and the right should be reserved for delicates).

She leaves the washing to its own devices, only returning two hours later to find another note waiting for her with her sheets. This one about not leaving her sheets unattended.

And that's how it begins.

The next week when Saturday night comes around, she finds that her Cheesecake Factory uniform could really do with a wash before her next shift.

And the week after that she's all out of clean clothes all over again.

The next week she realizes she was a little over zealous in washing _all_ of her clothing, and so she simply leaves a note addressed to "Doctor Sheldon Cooper AKA the wackadoodle in 4A".

And that's when it really begins.


End file.
